Wednesday, July 20, 2011

In case you were unaware, today happens to be the 42nd anniversary of men landing on the moon. Human history changed forever once Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on our celestial neighbor, but despite a decade of planning, training and testing there were no guarantees that the mission would be a success. In fact, there was more than a little concern that the engine on the lunar module might fail to ignite – after all, blasting men off from the surface of another world was something that had never been tried before – marooning Armstrong and Aldrin forever. The possibility was considered so real that a speech was prepared for just such an occurrence for President Nixon to read to the nation. “Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace...” went the first line of the speech Nixon thankfully never had to give. The Los Angeles Times has the rest of the text of the speech and more about this forgotten bit of American history over at their website today.

Mission Statement

Why A World View? Because I was frustrated by the lack of international news coverage in the American press. Sadly, foreign events usually only make the news when there’s a war or natural disaster someplace. But the world is more interconnected than ever, what happens on the other side of the globe can have a direct affect on your life. So I started this site to cover some of these stories missed by the mainstream media, and to provide analysis and context to others. And my goal is to do it in a way that you don’t feel like you need a PhD degree to understand what’s going on.